US Treasury Secretary Praises US Dollar, Disses Bitcoin

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says you won’t find him hodling Bitcoin in five years. In a new interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Mnuchin, an outspoken crypto skeptic, touts the strength of the US dollar.

Addressing President Trump’s push for a weak dollar policy to facilitate a “level playing field” and to stimulate global trade, Kernen asks Mnuchin if he’ll become the first treasury secretary in US history to support that theory.

Says host Joe Kernen,

“In the past, we’ve never had a treasury secretary do anything other than say we have a strong dollar policy and we advocate a strong dollar policy. So you could be the first one in history to say we have a weak dollar policy.”

Mnuchin responds,

“While treasury secretaries have always said they believe in a strong dollar, treasury secretaries have been particularly careful about commenting on the dollar.”

Mnuchin says he’s been misinterpreted in the past.

“Let me just clarify this. I think the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. It’s in our interests. We want to maintain it. A stable dollar is very important and over the long-term period of time, again, the long term, I do believe in a strong dollar which signifies a strong US economy, a strong stock market, and particularly because of the President’s economic policies.

We have growth in the US that has outpaced everywhere else. We have a ton of money as a result of tax cuts, regulatory relief coming into the US. Just as the stock market has gone up as a result of these policies, these markets are the largest traded markets in the world. The dollar trades as much as anything in the world every day, and there’s buyers and sellers. And right now there’s a lot of people who want to invest in the US dollar and that creates a lot of demand for dollars.

…

I am not going to advocate a weak dollar policy near term as the Treasury Secretary.”

As for Bitcoin gaining traction, Mnuchin is dismissive.

“I won’t be talking about Bitcoin in 10 years, I can assure you that…

I would bet even in five or six years, I’m no longer talking about Bitcoin as Treasury Secretary. I’ll have other priorities… I can assure you, I will personally not be loaded up on Bitcoin.”

You can check out the Treasury Secretary’s remarks on the US dollar here.

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